the Falidihj of the Doctrine of Contagion in the Plague. 1 7 



armies was infected with the plague. The disorder ceased be- 

 tween the 17th and 24th of June, at the precise time when its 

 cessation had been anticipated and assured by the inhabitants, 

 except at Ahoukir, where it continued to exist sotne time longer. 

 It was also allirmed to us by the French officers, that although the 

 plague had raged in Cairo that year with very great violence, and 

 carried off some of the French army, yet notwithstanding a con- 

 stant communication was held between the garrison stationed in 

 the citadel and the inhabitants of the town, the soldiers in the 

 citadel were not affected, in any one instance, with the disorder. 

 Many thousands of the inhabitants of Lower Egypt had died that 

 year of the plague. The Indian army, passing through Upper 

 Egypt, had traversed a country in which about sixty thousand in- 

 habitants were said to have perished ; whole villages having been 

 destroyed ; but yet the troops of that army brought no infection 

 vvith them, nor were any precautions adopted to prevent conta- 

 gion on their junction with the British European army. To these 

 circumstances Sir R. W. was an eye-witness. Wishes also to 

 state, that as they moved through the country, the inhabitants 

 pointed out to them particular villages that were infected with 

 plague, and which plague did not extend out of those particular 

 villages to any of the contiguous villages, although there was no 

 precaution whatever used as to the communication with the inha- 

 bitants of the infected villages. Conversing with Dr. Desgenettes, 

 the chief physician of the Fiench army, and M. Assilini, the head 

 surgeon of the French army, they assured Sir R. W., that whe)i- 

 ever a battalion infected with the plague had been marched out 

 of the infected place, the soldiers recovered, and never con- 

 veyed the infection to other garrisons ; and that troops marching 

 into that infected garrison which had been vacated, did not be- 

 come themselves infected, unless they remained there longer than 

 eight or ten days. And M. Assilini further assured SirR. that seve- 

 ral French officers and soldiers, who had the plague, havijig re- 

 moved themselves, or been removed when sick of the plague, into 

 other places, they had almost always recovered. But he said, 

 his great difficulty was in j)ersuading people to make the exertion 

 of movement ; for they were generally so enervated that thev pre- 

 ferred to remain where they were aiid meet their fate. Thinks 

 the plague is a fever originating in a particular state of the at- 

 mosphere, produced from local causes and confined to their in- 

 fluence. Should suppose it must arise from a putrid state of the 

 atmosphere; because those villages which, were infected, were 

 stated by the inhabitants to be generallv those where the mud 

 had been left longest, and the moisture only, after considerable 

 stagnation, had been absorbed. The Nile annuallv overflows all 

 the inhabitod land with a body of water four or five feet in dejUh, 

 Vol. 55. No. 2(il. Ja?i. 1820. B and 



